


In the Blink of An Eye

by vegashoods



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: M/M, Stiles Dies, This is super sad, it's mostly sterek, really it's just a rollercoaster of sad, with side scisaac
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-25
Updated: 2016-10-25
Packaged: 2018-08-24 15:18:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8377045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vegashoods/pseuds/vegashoods
Summary: There's been an accident.





	

It was over in less than a minute.

Scott had been the one to see the car, the one to see it coming toward them way too fast, blowing past the stop sign. Whatever warning he’d started to yell had been cut off by the sound of metal smashing into metal, the passenger side of Derek’s car caving in on itself with a sickening crunch. They skidded across the road and into the ditch--Derek felt the vibration as Scott’s head smacked into the back of his seat--and then it was over.

“Isaac?” he heard from the backseat. “Shit, Isaac, are you okay? Come on, talk to me.”

Derek groaned, releasing his grip on the steering wheel; it hadn’t ended up doing them any good, anyway. He let his head fall back against the headrest and tried to calm his breathing, to get over the shock. “Are you guys all right back there?” he called.

“I’m fine,” said Scott. “Isaac looks okay, but he’s unconscious. We’re good. How is it up there? Stiles, are you good?”

Shit. In a car full of werewolves, all with advanced healing abilities, Derek hadn’t considered Stiles. He hadn’t thought about the fact that if Stiles wasn’t okay, he really wasn’t okay.

“Derek! Something’s wrong with Stiles. We have to get him out of the car,” Scott said. “You can’t freak out right now, okay? I know you want to, I know, I do too, but you can’t. Get out, get Stiles out, I’m--gonna call an ambulance.”

Derek was shaking, his breaths more and more uneven as he finally forced himself to look over at Stiles. He knew it wasn’t good even before he opened his eyes--the stench of blood was overwhelming in the tiny space of the car. He steeled himself and sat up, turning his head to assess the damage.

Stiles was sprawled out in the seat, broken glass from his shattered window shimmering on his jacket. There was blood everywhere, in Stiles’ hair and on his jeans and the seat and staining his white shoelaces red. He wasn’t moving at all, his eyes were closed, and his mouth was slightly open. Derek fought the urge to throw up and pushed open his door, which was perfectly intact except for a few scratches. It was a sharp contrast to the collapsed, ruined passenger side that Stiles was in.

Scott and Isaac were already outside, sitting together on the pavement a few feet from the car. Isaac was awake but pale and shaken, wincing as he flexed his hand--probably healing from a break. Scott had his hand resting right next to Isaac’s, close but not touching. Just close enough to remind him that he was there. He caught Derek’s eyes, and his expression betrayed just how scared he was. No matter how he acted, he was young, and he couldn’t pretend that nothing affected him.

Derek turned away before he made any promises he couldn’t keep.

He blew out a breath as he climbed across the driver’s seat. “Come on, Stiles,” he said. “You’re gonna be fine.”

It proved to be harder than he’d expected to get Stiles out--his arm was pinned between the crushed door and the seat, and Derek had to push the door off of its hinges to get it out. He wondered briefly how he was going to explain that to the police, then decided that he didn’t care. He noticed, belatedly, the car that had hit them, sitting in the middle of the road with a dented hood and not much else. The guy driving had his head laying on the steering wheel, but Derek could see him moving. He was awake, and he didn’t even care that he’d caused . . .

Derek blinked and lifted Stiles out of the car as carefully as he could, not knowing if anything was broken and not wanting to make it worse.

He carried him bridal style to a patch of grass next to Scott and Isaac and set him down on the ground, falling backwards onto his hands with a choked noise somewhere between a sob and a gasp. “Oh, God,” he whispered. “Shit, I--shit.”

Scott turned to the side and threw up, Isaac tracing intricate patterns on his back and whispering in his ear, his forehead pinched with sadness.

Derek wasn’t aware he was crying until his vision was blurred by the tears, until his eyes were burning and he could feel his chest heaving with the weight of his sobs.

He would have given anything to see Stiles’ chest move.

He forced himself to lean forward, dragging Stiles over so his head was resting in Derek’s lap. Regardless of the condition he was in, he looked at peace--he was an angel, all covered in blood.

“Shit,” he whispered. “Come on, Stiles. Come on. You--you and me, we’re gonna be together, remember? We’re almost set on that house, and we almost have a date picked out for--for our wedding, do you remember? Come on. You’re not . . . Stiles, open your eyes!”

“Derek.” He jumped at the feeling of a hand on his shoulder; sometime when he hadn’t been paying attention, Scott and Isaac had stood and made their way over to him. 

Him and Stiles.

Scott had tear tracks on his cheeks, and Derek could see him swallowing against the breakdown that was bubbling just under the surface. “Derek, he’s . . . Stiles is gone,” he said, his voice a hoarse near-whisper. Derek could hear sirens in the distance, could see house lights turning on around them as curious people nearby tried to catch a glimpse of the accident.

Derek clenched his jaw, hands shaking. He threw Scott’s hand off his arm without looking up. “Shut up,” he growled. “You have no idea what you’re talking about. He’s gonna be just fine, and--”

“No, he’s not!” Scott shouted. A fresh wave of tears was washing down his face, and it was an almost visible break in Scott’s carefully constructed composure. “He’s not gonna be okay, Derek! He’s not like us, he’s just a human, and he’s fucking dead, okay? Stiles is dead.”

“He’s not,” said Derek, running his hand through Stiles’ hair, ignoring the sticky patch where blood had spread. “This isn’t the end, I know it isn’t. We--he promised me he wouldn’t leave me, he promised. He’s gonna be fine.”

Scott turned away, closing his eyes against the impossible, horrifying scene in front of him. He pulled at his hair and let out a low growl, slipping up on his control just enough for his eyes to flash yellow. “Listen to his heartbeat, Derek,” he said, his quiet tone barely carrying over the approaching sirens. “It’s stopped.”

Derek shook his head, twisting Stiles’ ring around his finger, the thin gold band that Derek had given him five months ago. The thought of the wedding not happening twisted a knife in Derek’s heart--he couldn’t imagine living with the knowledge that he wouldn’t get to spend the rest of his life with his best friend, and because of what? Some drunk asshole who thought it would be fine to drive. The ambulance being a minute too late, Derek being a minute too late. He was too scared to listen, too scared to face the inevitable truth that was written on Scott and Isaac’s faces.

“I can’t,” he whispered. “I--I can’t do this without him, shit. It’s not fair, okay? He had so much left, you know? We were gonna go on vacation to London after the wedding, did you know that? He wanted to see London, he kept talking about how excited he was to see London, and now. . .”

Scott put his hand back on Derek’s shoulder, and this time, he let him. The police and the ambulance finally arrived, and in a flash of lights and shouts and words that he didn’t understand, someone was pulling Stiles away from him and he couldn’t follow them because Scott was holding him back. He was screaming, and it was mostly just Stiles’ name, over and over like a mantra.

Derek had been through a lot. He’d been stabbed, shot, electrocuted, almost drowned--his body had been mutilated so many times that injuries hardly bothered him anymore. But no wound, no aching bones from being thrown through a wall, no physical pain could ever amount to what he was feeling. It was like someone had ripped his heart directly out of his chest, stomped on it, and shoved it back inside him broken. 

It was kind of funny, really. In a lot of ways, it was similar to the way Derek had felt the day he’d realized he was in love with Stiles. It was the same jump of an accelerated heart rate, the same distant shock, the same jumble of thoughts that were mostly about the way Stiles smiled or his laugh or his dorky tee shirts or the passionate way that he loved with all his heart.

It was all the same, but it was all for the wrong reasons.

And now Stiles was gone, and all that was left to remind Derek of him was the blood on his hands and the ring on his finger. Someone was helping him into the back of an ambulance, putting a blanket around his shoulders, but he didn’t really notice. Less than a minute, he thought, and he’d lost Stiles.

Less than a minute, and he’d lost everything.

**Author's Note:**

> i feel kind of terrible for writing this because i've already posted cutesy sterek stuff but i had ideas...sorry bout it


End file.
